Pioneer Kickstarter Preview

[lategamer]

The AI says the AE35 board just needs replacing. Get to it, Dave!

Dave. Can you pick up the newly printed AE35 board from the Utility Room and carry it to drone A13.
“Ccol. What else can I do?”
Return to the TV room, Dave.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Crew asked Mission Control to crunch the nubers for 4 hours and got a +2 by the Pioneer game mechanics for their Orbital Mechanics check,

So not something you can do just by pressing a button and holding firm on the joystick...

point being without the groundside engineers that burn could not have been performed by eyeballing it...

stick a modern AI computer on board capable of making the calculations necessary in the time and you may have a chance, going all Bruce Willis not so much

cinematic vs hard science...

 

[Michael S]

So not something you can do just by pressing a button and holding firm on the joystick...

point being without the groundside engineers that burn could not have been performed by eyeballing it...

stick a modern AI computer on board capable of making the calculations necessary in the time and you may have a chance, going all Bruce Willis not so much

cinematic vs hard science..

I am not argueing your point, John Glen only had the joystick in his pressure suit and he and the rest of the Mercury crew flew on the maths done by NASA's "Computers" before NASA got *their* edit first IBM.
But i will argue that AI today is nothing more than cinematic, some of it is funny just for being drivel. We went from 1903-12-17 to some seriously impressive planes in 37-38 years later in WW2, maybe the AI will be ready to drive by then

 

[Sigtrygg]

AI pilots are already winning dogfights against human pilots...
although I would take those reports with a pinch of salt.

 

[rinku]

The further away from mission control the more the crew will need to rely on their local resources.

Not as bad for Luna, with a few seconds communication lag, but Mars can be over 20 minutes. Once you get to the outer planets, you'd better hope your onboard computer is good.

 

[lategamer]

Not as bad for Luna, with a few seconds communication lag, but Mars can be over 20 minutes. Once you get to the outer planets, you'd better hope your onboard computer is good.

Ah, it will be.

I’d wager there are web apps that could compute trajectories these days.

 

[rinku]

The calculations probably aren't the issue, as much as the data. The mission may be more or less limited to calculating their own emephera and be relying on calculated ones for the bodies they'll be visiting. They may have limited ability to track an unexpected object.

And if an Apollo 13 situation happens on the Ceres mission, it's 15 to 30 minutes for them to tell Houston they have a problem, and another 15 to 30 minutes to get a reply. Ideally, the mission would be set to arrive when Ceres is closer to Earth than not, but the fuel usage situation may mean otherwise.

 

[lategamer]

The calculations probably aren't the issue, as much as the data. The mission may be more or less limited to calculating their own emephera and be relying on calculated ones for the bodies they'll be visiting. They may have limited ability to track an unexpected object.

Pick lighter astronauts and you can get all the telemetry and sensors you can handle into the flight package. We are mapping the entire world with LIDAR at the moment (because of competitive advantage reasons), if that attention moves to space there will be a surge in sensors and massive data collation.

And if an Apollo 13 situation happens on the Ceres mission, it's 15 to 30 minutes for them to tell Houston they have a problem, and another 15 to 30 minutes to get a reply. Ideally, the mission would be set to arrive when Ceres is closer to Earth than not, but the fuel usage situation may mean otherwise.

Someone or something will have to make a decision somewhere.

Now that could be an AGI “Strap in we will be pulling up to 4G” (which reminds me of the Culture series), an expert system (dedicated flight LLM really) or left to the human pilots.

Assistive LLMs are widespread right now. (In work we’re currently specifying a massive data archive to allow instant access to a decade of data - petabytes of stuff - for image analysis - all of that will be “AI” assisted. It’s been proven to be better than humans.). Apply that to astrometrics and 30+ years of development and as others have suggested; you’d be crazy to let a human near the controls.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Dave. Can you pick up the newly printed AE35 board from the Utility Room and carry it to drone A13.
“Ccol. What else can I do?”
Return to the TV room, Dave.

Yeah, this is what we are avoiding

Pioneer is based on the Traveller rules, and Traveller is all about the people, making people decisions (with people consequences).

The design principle for Pioneer is 'make players feel like they are doing orbital mechanics, without getting them to actually do orbital mechanics.'

Verisimilitude rather than simulation.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The further away from mission control the more the crew will need to rely on their local resources.

Not as bad for Luna, with a few seconds communication lag, but Mars can be over 20 minutes. Once you get to the outer planets, you'd better hope your onboard computer is good.

Not to mention highly trained versatile crew who have skill redundancy.

 

[lategamer]

Not to mention highly trained versatile crew who have skill redundancy.

Not the PCs then

 

[Brianw]

Focusing on the human aspect is fine, but for some of us in the Kickstarter it seems verisimilitude of hardware is…lacking. At least 3 of us have brought up concerns in the KS comments about the hardware detailed thus far seeming outdated/unrealistic and for a few days now have heard nothing from the developers. Except for one response about a question regarding reporting typos.
I, and I’m guessing I’m not alone, was looking for a game where we can design a space program either as a government administrator or entrepreneur, and then design the missions (a la The Case For Mars or SpaceX) and then play them out using current/near future hardware. Those are human things as well.
Yes, Traveller is about humans doing human things, but it also has robust rules systems for ‘big picture’ things like setting up merchant endeavors, running merc companies and exploration.
I understand the need to have the players feel like they’re doing something, but from what little I’ve seen of the game thus far, having multiple mechanical crises come up just so that the players have to test their skills just doesn’t seem to reflect the current state of the second aerospace renaissance.
I don’t know. I don’t want to come off negative but it’s starting to look like this may not be the game I was hoping for and it makes me sad. Unless I’m not seeing the big picture of the game, in which case I wish the development team would be more present and cheerleaderish in trying to allay our fears and sell us on the game.